Gabriel Monod, (born March 7, 1844, Ingouville, France—died April 10, 1912, Versailles), historian who helped introduce German historical methodology to France. One of the most scholarly and stimulating teachers of history, he also greatly improved the seminar system.

Monod studied at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin, where he was influenced by Georg Waitz, an exponent of the historical techniques of the renowned German historiographer Leopold von Ranke. Returning to France in 1868, Monod gave lectures on history at L’École des Hautes Études, Paris. After the Franco-Prussian War (1870) he published his own experiences in it as Allemands et Français (1871; “The Germans and the French”). Shortly thereafter, he founded the Revue Historique.

Named lecturer at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris (1880), Monod was subsequently elected to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences and professor at the Collège de France, receiving many honours for his outstanding teaching. Among Monod’s other studies are the Études critiques sur les sources de l’histoire de France (1898) and Bibliographie de l’histoire de France (1888), a bibliographic treatment of France in the Middle Ages.

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...including Heinrich von Sybel (1817–95) and Jacob Burckhardt (1818–97). Ranke’s students established seminars of their own, and their hundreds of pupils were also disciples of Ranke. When Gabriel Monod (1844–1912), who would become one of the leading French historians of his generation, asked the great Hippolyte Taine (1828–92) whether he should go to Germany to study...